


our lifestyles are probably comparable

by silver_and_exact



Series: I feel like shit but look great [1]
Category: American Psycho - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dissociation, Everyone Has Issues, M/M, M/M...?, One Shot, POV Alternating, Paul Allen is a bored WASP, That Whole Yale Thing, amateur psychology in action!, and so is Patrick Bateman, how are there not more works in this fandom come on guys, possibly overly flowery prose (?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:48:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slight deviation in the usual course of events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our lifestyles are probably comparable

 

 

           It was a little past midnight when Paul Allen spilled out of the cab and tipsily trotted his perfect Italian leather shoes through the front entryway to Patrick Bateman's pricy New York apartment complex.  It was dark, but it was never really _too_ dark in the city, so when Paul made his way across the sidewalk he could concentrate well enough to successfully navigate, i.e. resolutely stare at his feet as they arduously propelled him forward.  He might have slipped up once, bracing a palm against the concrete, but he reasoned that this was likely due to an unevenness in the paving, or else a bit of the day's detritus left underfoot.  It wasn't because he'd had a few cocktails at the Canal Bar.   _The building's staff really should take care of that_ , he thought disdainfully, if fuzzily. 

             New York at night was sharp and scary and alive.  Sometimes Paul took walks at night, at hours deemed ungodly even to his friends, most of whom lived their lives fast-forwarded by routine jolts of cocaine.  He would take great care as he traveled past the alleyways, which always seemed overwhelmingly silent, almost subterranean.  The rest of the city wasn't like that.  It was sodden with the threat of things visible.  It was a mess of police sirens and the abrasive laughter of large groups of strangers, fights between chemically-altered nightclub patrons.  The clatter of stiletto heels and answering catcalls as sex workers plied their trade under streetlamps.  All in all, very humdrum.  Very expected. 

            Sometimes Paul would intentionally cross the street to pass an extra alley or two; he would walk a little slower by their openings, the black mouths baring teeth made up of discarded things.  A possibly imagined drop in temperature, a sudden thrill of fear brushing the back of his neck like a velvet glove.  Pulse morse-code tapping out a warning in his throat, his heart suddenly so much closer to the outside world. 

             Paul liked to walk at night. 

            For a moment he felt the impulse to invite Patrick on one of his walks.  They could put on their most glaringly expensive clothes and go play victim in the slums.  Just for a moment.  Then he thought better of the whole thing.  It was silly, really.  Besides, Patrick was already ahead of him, standing near the doorman and shooting him a narrow-eyed glare.  Paul picked himself up from a fall that he'd already begun to stubbornly recollect as inconsequential, dusted off his suit, and stumbled through the doorway.

  

.... . . . . . .  .  .  .  .   .   .   .   .    .    .    .     .     .     .      .      .      .      .       .       .       .        .        .        .         .                .                 .

 

             Patrick invited a lot of people to his apartment.  Usually they were prostitutes.  Call girls, if he wanted to class it up a bit.  More specifically, usually they were dead call girls, but they didn't have the sense to figure that out in advance.  It was alright though.  He liked what they thought of him and what they didn't think of him, what they assumed just by looking at his face, his clothing. 

             He liked that they recognized the value of his possessions.  He even liked that they sometimes tried to take some of these possessions, and he'd made something of a game out of plucking the small yet devastatingly expensive vials of colognes and lotions and exfoliants out of their handbags and pockets after they'd retired for the evening.  One woman had attempted to hide one of his best watches in her stockings.  It was all quite charming.  Patrick luxuriated in the closed circuit of his habitat; the labyrinth, the beautiful snare he'd set up so carefully, like building a ship in a bottle.  The multitude of warning signs his human veneer, though thinly-stretched, apparently voided.

          They were like children who had fallen over the guardrail and into the pen of something carnivorous at the zoo.  Wanting only to play with the lion, they sat and watched themselves get eaten up.  The same look of surprise through different false eyelashes, hedged in multicolored shadow and liner.      

             It wasn't even that Patrick specifically disliked women over men.  At least, he didn't think so.  He liked to think of himself as an egalitarian sort of man with modern sensibilities, and besides, he wasn't sure that he actually liked or disliked anyone in particular.  He had a hazy idea of what these words meant to other people, but thinking about it was confusing, and he preferred not to be confused. 

            The status quo just made inviting women over—even if they were paid women—more normal, and Patrick enjoyed having an audience.  However bizarre he acted, the women would almost always pretend that everything was okay, up until the point when it was so obviously not.  It was like his apartment was a little theatre, and Patrick was never completely sure how the play would progress, just how it would end.  That and the women were less likely to be his peers, who were, as such, more likely to be missed.  Social structures conspiring against them, converting them to prey.  How unfortunate.

             So Patrick was already feeling a little out of sorts after he'd asked Paul Allen up to his apartment.  Occasionally he did things and didn't quite realize he was doing them.  One of the side-effects of living in a stage production was that sometimes he found himself playing the role of the director and sometimes the role of the lead actor.  He had pretended to drink in excess and watched as Paul became less and less coherent, less of a peer, until it grew repulsive and borderline absurd that Paul was the man who had a better business card and could get reservations at Dorsia.  The right combination of typeface and color, with a little texture thrown in.  Just chance, really.  Just an accident. 

             It had to be, because the business card was Patrick.  Patrick was the apartment.  Patrick was the reservation and the secretary and the suit and the office.  It was all one organism, one series of custom-crafted setpieces, and no rival production was going to outstage it.  He wouldn't call what he was feeling 'angry'.  He called it 'displeased'.  Patrick had never been angry.  He had mimed the symptoms of anger thousands of times, but every time he thought he was starting to feel something he would become the director.  A little less precision in the tone, Patrick advised himself sternly.  A little more force in the hands.  Roll sound - roll camera - marker.

 

.... . . . . . .  .  .  .  .   .   .   .   .    .    .    .     .     .     .      .      .      .      .       .       .       .        .        .        .         .                .                

 

             Paul sat on a chair in Patrick's apartment (to call it a living room seemed like a stretch) and made halting stabs at small talk which were promptly steamrolled over by the other man's ravings.  God, Bateman was weird.  If he was sober, he'd have probably left by now, but the alcohol made everything more entertaining.  He felt a bit like he was in a cartoon or a Charlie Chaplin film.  Like an anvil or piano could fall from the ceiling at any minute. 

             That reminded him.  If Paul was going to be drunk, he ought to at least do it properly and black out. 

             He didn't much like being in the liminal state he presently occupied; he was still aware, yet very firmly impeded by intoxication.  But Bateman was  _weird_.  Remarkably weird, and he wanted to pay attention.  It was a bit like standing in front of one of his darkened alleys.  The lingering feeling of unidentifiable threat.  The otherworldly wrongness of the whole scenario.  Even inebriated, Paul could tell that something not-quite-right was going on here, but he didn't really mind.  Whatever was going on was certainly more interesting than his usual perfunctory social engagements, which inevitably involved some guy who looked just like him scoring some cocaine, followed by an excess of work griping, political griping, and an unending stream of one-upsmanship—predictable.  What he was currently witnessing was pure, delirious manic energy in action.  Not the fake, narcotics-induced kind.  This was the real thing, and Paul would be damned if he left before he figured out what it was leading up to.

 

 .... . . . . . .  .  .  .  .   .   .   .   .    .    .    .     .     .     .      .      .      .      .       .       .       .        .        .        .         .                .                

 

            Patrick would never allow a little thing like recreational homicide to interfere with his wardrobe, and so he put on the raincoat over his suit, jacket and all.  It was about control.  It was about proving that nothing could inconvenience him, because it simply wasn't allowed.  He didn't even have to change his clothes if he didn't want to. 

             Paul spouted some insipid nonsense and he cringed.   _You idiot, you're supposed to catch me_ , Patrick thought, irritated,  _not ask if I have pets.  You're supposed to figure out what I am.  I can't just go around killing my coworkers.  My not-marginalized, successful, white, male peers.  It wouldn't make sense.  This is supposed to be the tipping point.  The moment of revelation.  The third act._   _This life is a sonnet and you're ruining my volta, you fuck._

         An aside: as much as Patrick liked to think of himself as a god, it would probably be frustrating to be omnipotent.  It would be infuriating to confirm what he had already begun to suspect: that he would never—no, worse,  _could_  never—be apprehended.  To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything he did, everything he thought he was doing such a brilliant job at hiding, didn't need to be hidden at all because it wouldn't matter one way or another.  Oh well.  Time to kill Paul Allen. 

Patrick lifted the axe, offhandedly admiring the way his muscles easily adjusted to its weight, and tensed to swing.   

Everything was going splendidly, until Paul slurred

            "So, Bateman, level with me—do you always get your dates this drunk?"

            Patrick almost dropped the axe.  No.  No no  _no_.  Uh-uh. 

A millennia went by.  Patrick and Paul aged grotesquely in stop-motion.  New species slithered from the ooze of creation.  Stars went nova, suns shattered and dimmed.  A laugh track began playing, faintly, in the background.  And eventually, despite all of this, Patrick Bateman retained his ability to speak.

            "You're... like Luis?" he said lamely. 

            He heard his voice and winced.  He sounded so  _confused._

            " _What?_   Luis Carruthers... is  _a homosexual_?" replied Paul mock-incredulously, raising his eyebrows. 

            Patrick was suddenly encompassed by a feeling of overwhelming absurdity.  He didn't have conversations.  This wasn't how this worked.  This was turning into a fucking conversation.  And it was almost mutual, too.  He tried to think up a good monologue and came up with nothing.  Panicking, Patrick stood stock-still and mute for far longer than the script called for.  He should get his CDs.  Get things back on track.  Maybe he could mix it up and talk about music he  _didn't_  like.  It wasn't a big deal to deviate a tad from the norm in order to cover up a terrible error.  Ad-libbing.  The greats did it. 

             " _Bateman._ "

             Paul interrupted his stabs at problem-solving.  He was drumming his fingertips against his leg.  Patrick's gaze locked on to the point of motion helplessly. 

             "Aren't you going to get me another drink or something?  Or, I don't know, a glass of water?  I'm going to have the most  _dreadful_  headache tomorrow."

             Patrick leaned the axe against the chair and backed away slowly. 

             Then he went into the kitchen and, against his better judgment, poured Paul a glass of Perrier. 

             After what felt like a lifetime of staring at the glass and wondering what on earth he was doing, Patrick finally left the kitchen. He found Paul curled up on his carefully covered chair, legs hugged toward his torso with one arm and the other slung over the edge of the cushion.  His sleep-wilted hand hovered above the newsprint on the floor.  Above the fucking obituaries, of all things, and Patrick started to think that maybe all of this made some kind of sense.  He sat down on the sofa and didn't move for a long time.  After a while, he put the glass of water on the table, got up, and quietly folded up the newspapers. 

             In the morning he called Paul a cab.  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, I've kind of had this fic stuck in my head for ages. It started out as a joke, the joke being the insertion of the line "do you always get your dates this drunk" into the Paul Allen axe murder scene, but then I started thinking about it in earnest. Like, what would happen if the whole thing was misinterpreted as a date? What if the whole thing kind of _was_ a date? Wouldn't that derail the plot a bit? Idk, but it was fun to write. 
> 
> Also it blew my mind a little that there aren't many American Psycho fics out there. For shame.
> 
> I may have altered the story a little, e.g. Paul Allen knows he's talking to Bateman and not Halberstam/everyone knows Luis is gay. Whatevs.
> 
> So... uh... is this an alright story? (I REALLY appreciate reviews/kudos)
> 
> -Silver&Exact


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